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zacharye writes "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer undoubtedly knows that Apple has sold more than 100 million iPad tablets at this point, but according to the outspoken executive, that's not the tablet people really want. While speaking with CNBC, Ballmer said no company has built a tablet he believes customers want. 'You can go through the products from all those guys and none of them has a product that you can really use. Not Apple. Not Google. Not Amazon. Nobody has a product that lets you work and play that can be your tablet and your PC. Not at any price point,' he says."

I would have to say that a MacBook Air (if you don't really care about touch, or a Dell XPS Touch Ultrabook with the flip around screen if you insist on a touch interface, would come pretty close to this. The MBA and ultrabooks are basically small enough that they take up about the same amount of space as a tablet, yet they contain a real OS and a real keyboard that let you get real work done. The problem is that for the price of them, you could pick up both a laptop and a tablet, and have the best of both

That's because 'work' is almost always (except a very few niche cases) about creation, and creation without precision input devices is tedious and frustrating. Precision input in this case means a keyboard that I can type at full speed on, and a pointing device that is pixel accurate. Even with the keyboard cover that the surface uses, I don't think it meets either of those criteria.

Sums it up nicely. Using a tablet for professional work is like using a minivan to move your furniture. Perhaps it does the job, but you'll always get things done faster and better with tools designed for the task.

It will be interesting to see if they actually get their sh1t together for "surface 2" or whatever they will call it. Right now Microsoft seems to be firmly in the middle of a "crap nobody wants" cycle with Windows 8 and Surface. And with Surface, I see some potential in the concept, they just fumbled the delivery badly.

Compared to what? a 64GB iPad (3rd generation) is $649 and a 64GB Surface tablet is $699, but the surface comes with a cover that includes a stand and a keyboard AND a customized version of Office. Both will run anything you can find in their App Store -- granted, Apple's has a bit more at the moment, but that could easily change. So, to me, the Surface seems more like a bargain than the iPad.

The netbook I currently use on trips cost €220. Since it's fully encrypted, it means that having it stolen or leaving it on the train is a fairly minor annoyance (I've had one stolen already).

Since I have a nice laptop at home and a nice desktop at work, I'd gladly replace it with a tablet, as long as I can encrypt the flash, view PDFs, run LaTeX, and plug in a projector. But not at that price.

Since it's not clear from your post, the Surface (even the RT version) can do all of that.

Full storage encrypting is available, based on BitLocker as you might expect. It works seamlessly; my company mandates device encryption and enforces it when connecting to the Exchange server, and I didn't even realize the BitLocker encryption was actually in progress until I got a notification saying it was complete.

There's a built-in PDF viewing app; no more need for third-party software.

One of the features that I look forward to using in the Windows 8 world is the ability to automatically sync data between like programs on different devices. I'm already seeing that somewhat on my Windows 8 laptop (a Macbook Pro), and the Vivo Tab RT I picked up on Friday. Everything is tied in to my single account and everything syncs up nicely.

I've been waiting for someone to get this right. I thought Apple was going to be the one, hence the MacBook, iPad, and iPhone purchases, but syncing data between these devices is still fairly archaic. Google nearly had me when they allowed devices to link to my Google account. Microsoft is taking home the prize for the seamless integration between my two devices. When WIndows Phone 8 comes out for Verizon, I'm there with bells on.

And to pre-empt any accusations: I'm a total shill for Microsoft. That's why I have all my Apple stuff, and a Google Nexus 7. That's also why I bought an Asus RT tablet.

Microsoft behemothicity didn't exactly make the Zune or the previous generations of Windows devices major market performers. One can argue that the XBox division did greatly benefit, but then again, Microsoft dumped a helluva lot of money into it, and it's likely to be years before that investment is ever paid off, so it's difficult to call it a success.

Apple is also a behemoth now, so there's no longer Microsoft and everyone else. It has actual competition, and competition that has had a couple of years no

- too lad = disagree, that would imply once a vendor grabs most of the marketshare, it's pointless to enter the market. macosx and linux should give up trying to grab more marketshare in the desktop/laptop space?

was just gonna say that myself so I'll refrain from a dup and just forward my chuckle. I dare him to say that while standing in front of a market share pie chart. anytime. actually, I'ld like to see him lose a bet and be forced to do it, a year (or two) from now.

I was excited to get my surface on Friday. By Sunday I decided to return it. I found it to be a compromise both as a tablet and a laptop. Many ui items are too small and I did not like the transitions from tablet ui to laptop ui and back again. I love the custom tiles of the start screen, unfortunately I found it to be all downhill from there.

We buy the "convertible" tablet PCs. Very few of them, but they do exist. They are stupidly expensive, bulky, heavy, clunky pieces of equipment which suck in every way in comparison to the non-tablet version of the same notebook for all tasks that they are not explicitly purchased to perform.

However, in those tasks which we purchase them for, the users love them. Here's to that form factor going the hell away in favor of something like the Asus Transformer, except with

I actually thought they just might pull it off. Right up until I bought Windows 8. It's such a schizophrenic pile of annoyances that there's no way I figure I could love it. It's everything you want in a PC, except that it switches all around on you and eagerly tries to be a tablet, but only in a way that's both counter-intuitive and confusing.

It's worse than painful. At least Vista, when it worked, did. Win8, when it works, is still confusing as hell.

why do people think that "I didn't like it" is a valid reason to return something they've purchased? Even if it's part of the store's return policy and all

I'm going out on a limb here, but, "if it's part of the store's return policy," then, by definition, 'I didn't like it' is "a valid reason to return something they've purchased."

I would never use a return policy to test drive new toys. It really takes some warped sense of entitlement to have that attitude. It actually seems unethical to me to demand money back for a product that functions as advertised.

It seems unethical to me to not provide purchasers with a viable way of determining whether or not a product meets their needs. Advertising is just that. The proof is in the pudding.

Locking a laptop to a retail counter and then locking it into a self-serving demo mode doesn't tell me how heavy it really is, if it's going to fit in my briefcase, if the on-board serial ports are the 16550A UARTs I need to interface with the laser cutter in the lab (dating myself a bit here, but...), etc. And speaking as a former retail slave (Best Buy, Computer City, on-campus Apple sales rep), 99.95% of the retail sales people can't answer highly specific technical questions.

If there's no feasible way to determine if a product meets your needs (by trying it out in actual use case scenarios) before purchasing it, and if the store return policy expressly permits returning it after such a trial, it's absolutely ethical to return something you realized -- at the only point you could have so realized, i.e., after purchase -- does not meet your needs.

If not, then don't bother me until it does. If I want a crayon-level interface, I'll go with the one that has a bazillion apps for all my media content consuming needs. When a really useful, 256+ pressure level, pen-accurate input with palm/heel rejection gets here, then I'll consider switching.

The Surface Pro [microsoft.com] does. Here is a longer list [live.com] of Windows 8 tablets with DPI > 150 and a stylus. I find 150 DPI to be the minimum if you want subscripts to be legible when placing a full page on screen (width maximized). Of course, the higher the better.

I've long been frustrate that Apple decided to forgo the stylus (and all others are playing copycat), and I'm really really frustrated that no one else sees the utility and use case in a computer that acts like paper (facepalm). I'll give Windows 8 a t

Got me all excited for a moment. Then I did a google search and turned up nothing detailed on the stylus input. I can hold my nose on 16:9 if I get real, pressure sensitive stylus input. The next questions is whether the screen will have a decent color gamut and viewable angle without degradation (IPS variant?), and when will the HD actually be available. My laptop is ready for replacement, but the end of the year is is (somewhat) artificial limit so that I can capture the business tax savings as quickly as

Yes. Tim Cook Will say the iPad is what people want. Balmer will say the Surface is what people want. Google will be pushing Chrome...

Time will tell what people really want. Focus group are sometimes wrong. Even what the internet buzz thinks it want isn't what people really want.

We here tend to figure if people didn't make the same choice that we made, some how their decision is corrupted by marketing, or misinformation, while we are more pure... But we all see things and weight them differently. If someone says they like x for reason y. You really shouldn't discredit reason y, if reason y is important to them. Reason y may not matter to you. But that is the great thing about choice... We get to pick what we want. So trying to discredit someone elses choice is just stupid.

You give the average user far too much credit; there's a big difference between knowing what you want (and knowing why)... and thinking that you know what you want (when you really haven't a fucking clue).

I hate to point it out to you, but you've not really made a PC that can be my tablet and or PC too either. You keep fucking failing. I know, I've spent hours and hours testing windows 8, just like I tested XP on a Q1 and 7 on the same Q1 before it.

The ARM move you made probably does have a place - but its got ZERO to do with running my 'PC' as a tablet. In fact I can't do any of that. The PC part doesn't even exist. As for your X86 tablet - oh sure, I can have my PC - but minus the start button. And minus anything to do with tablet - unless I accept Metro/Notro as my new PC life. Only 99% of everything PC I used or use is desktop based. I have no idea who you think you are talking to - Its not me.

And the real world information is rolling through the isles. The real benchmarks are closing in. Worse performance in use, worse gaming, worse multitasking, worse application compat, and continuing doese of screw me.

To be frank, by forcing this broken Notro paradigm down my through - I've never ever going to be less than hostile to your dumb sales pitch. Your new OS is a cut down 7 with some nice engineering changes in the normal method of win development - and to get them I am forced to use WinRT and this garbage UI (I won't - I'll re-engineer machinery not to - end of.) - and thats all she wrote according to you. It deserves to fail, and it deserves to supply the big pink slip to the people inside MS who ignored all the feedback from the userbase that said no.

By this interview, Ballmer proves what I had suspected: that Microsoft doesn't understand why tablets are popular, and what tablets are for. And this failure to understand is why they are ruining Windows, by trying to make it a "universal" OS.

Tablets are not a substitute for a laptop or desktop PC, nor do most people want them to be. They are a more convenient and portable way of surfing the Web, listening to music, watching videos on YouTube or Netflix, playing simple games, doing Facebook, reading e-books, and so forth. They are, in short, content consumption devices. They aren't good at producing stuff, and aren't supposed to be. A tablet is not a "junior laptop" and when Microsoft tried to treat it as such with their previous attempts, they failed miserably. But nor is a desktop or laptop a scaled-up tablet; if it was, no one could ever get any work done.

Ballmer doesn't seem to understand that for the average home user, firing up MS Office is a rare use case, and one that is easily enough satisfied by a 6-year-old system running Windows XP that the buyer sees no reason to upgrade. As for businesses, they like things the way they are; many of them would still be running Windows 2000 if they were able to. Microsoft doesn't see that the fact that they would benefit by people spending more money is irrelevant; what matters is if the buyers see the benefit in spending more money. And when it does come time to spend, they have to demonstrate why their product is better than the competitor's. It's not enough any more just for them to show up.

How is the Surface not usable in a corporate environment? Aside from the Office license, which you can purchase a business license for if you want to (and it's not as though MS can tell how you use it anyhow; screw EULAs), it's pretty damn corporate-friendly.

It explicitly supports sideloading business apps that don't go through the store process (it also, officially but hidden, supports sideloading *any* app, but that's another thing). It has excellent ActiveSync integration, so it plays very well with Exch

I understand that a CEO should be pushing his own products, but really? This is his reasoning? And it's not even reasoning, but sad marketing pulp that I don't think anyone actually believes (including the Microsoft people). People love their iPads, and people love their Android tablets. Sure, there are people who aren't happy and maybe flip, but I somehow doubt Microsoft is going to be the innovator in this part of the market.

I would have actually agreed if he said something like: most people are f

Steve Ballmer is the kind of guy that makes comedians lose their jobs. After he talks, there's basically no room to mock him, nothing funny or idiotic left to say, no better snarky riposte than what he just said. The comedic absurdity is built in. He mocks himself. He does it all, from soup to nuts. He's just that kind of guy.

Are you kidding me?! Surface is revolutionary! Its like a laptop, but the screen is where the keyboard goes and vice verse, and you use it the other way around! Then instead of a touchpad you just smear your fingers all over the screen and, if you are lucky, it doesn't tip over - Brilliant! Its like an ipad but without all the apps and fanboism, no wait... Its like a tablet for people that don't like tablets, wait...nobody likes tablets.

Ballmer continued to speak, explaining how he felt almost bad for Apple's losses after the Zune drove the iPod from the portable music player market. He then announced that Windows Vista had reached a new record of 92% market share, before taking a call on his Windows Phone and zipping off on his Segway.

I would like to see their sales forecasting. I mean outside of Apple, you've still got the Nook, the Fire, the Nexxus, and a plethora of other Android tablets eating up market share. Add the iPad Mini and the new HP Envy and I really don't see how this could go well for them.

Surface doesn't have any real competitive edge other than working with other Microsoft products (which is closer to a disadvantage IMHO).

I believe the term for that comment is 'sarcasm' not shill. Tone doesn't translate over text well, but the user's word uses made it clear - that was definitely sarcasm.

That being said, I'll take a NON-RT tablet over anything out there at the moment. Compared to the RT tablets, you're better off with an iPad, and if you are better off with an iPad, you might as well get one of the better Androids out there. The non-RTs however, can use normal Windows software, which means they don't have the walled garden restriction of the iPad or RT. Mind you, they are x86, so battery life and/or weight probably are a bit sucky.

Contrary to popular opinion, and for that matter to MS marketing, the walled garden on RT is a myth. Sideloading apps is fully possible (built into the OS and free to enable) so it's not really any more "walled" than Android in that respect.

Additionally, people have already figured out how to bypass the desktop app restriction, so you aren't even limited to just "Metro"-style apps from third parties either. That one *is* unofficial, so it's possible Microsoft may patch it out, but for now you can do pretty much anything you like with RT.

Unfortunately, reading the details reveals that this is explicitly disallowed by Microsoft. Although Microsoft allows an end user to obtain a developer license for the purposes of testing an app pre-certification, it explicitly disallows them from using a developer license to circumvent certification through the Windows Store, and claims that it will be monitoring for violations.

True, but that doesn't mean there isn't the possibility that Ballmer is right.

They probably looked at people who *aren't* buying iPads, and saying "what do you want?" and the answer was a highly portable keyboard, and regular desktop programs. The latter isn't an issue for the ipad exactly, and Microsoft hasn't pulled a great job by forking x86 and ARM and all that stuff, but I can see the argument that a laptop that easily doubles as a slate is more appealing than a slate by itself (to use the MS parlance

You can't do extensive photo editing or programming on an iPad either.

I just spent 6 weeks travelling with an iPad and the only thing it was really useful for was uploading photos I'd taken to and using it as a nice display to present the images to people I met. I did manage to edit up a video in iMovie to a reasonable degree though.

What *killed* it for me was the crappy keyboard and the limitations of IOS. I had to download an app in order to download and play freely available, legal MP3s off Soundcloud.

For my next trip I'm going to get a Mac Air I think, hardware wise the Surface looks exactly like it's what I want to be honest, but I'd miss OS X.

I use iPad for everything including writing papers....works just fine for what it is intended, and that is subjective to the user. In my use case, I am taking it when I am on a commute like the train, or on the go at classes. It's light and easy to use in closed quarters and when I'm back at my house I simply open the same notes on my laptop to continue. The right tool, in the right place at the right time.

So once again, just because you can not make it work....does not discount the rest of us who can.

Actually the virtual keyboards are pretty useful, and specially in the case of the iOS versions of Pages, Keynote and Numbers,(mostly in Numbers) are a godsend, since the keyboards change according to context, and in case of multilingual imput, in my case, Spanish, English and Japanese I can use the proper spell checker even word by word if I liked just by changing the virtual keyboard. For all the non alphabetical writing systems the virtual keyboard is so superior to the usual imput methods that the use of a "real" keyboard is a hindrance.

You can do all that with a crayon, too, but I wouldn't recommend it. I've hand compiled programs into machine code with no more than a pencil and a legal pad. I've edited photos by coloring them in, or by hand-cutting masks for use in a dark room. I've written term papers with a pen and ruled notebook paper. And I have both a 1st and 3rd gen iPad.

You can do all those things on an iPad, but it's a painful, slow, imprecise process which pales in comparison to even the most basic laptop (like my 11" Acer Timeline), and is only slightly less arduous than a root canal when compared to a fully featured computer (like my quad core i7 with a 30"+2x20" color corrected IPS monitors).

The GP is correct - you can't do any sort of real photo editing on an iPad. Or general drawing,drafting, or handwritten note-taking for any kind of advanced or technical class that can't be done better with a pencil and paper. IMHO, Jobs missed the boat on creative types by not putting a Wacom-style digitizer over the screen. Lightroom or Photoshop on such a beast would be very cool indeed. As it is, it's no better than a crayon, which is what the best stylus is. Yes, I can touch type on it, but get into anything that requires lots of numbers or symbols and you will either become one with the shift key or decide that it's faster just to wait to get back to the office and type on a real keyboard.

I like the iPad, and it's passable for content creation or editing for temporary or low-intensity products. It may still be as good or better than the Surface. But, on average, it's nowhere near high efficiency for technical or detailed artistic creation.

And it _does_ have note taking capability. I take notes all the time on mine (mostly with Nebulous). With dropbox I even share my note files between my phone, iPad 2, PC and Mac systems. I can also use Noteshelf (with a Jotz stylus) to do hand-written notes and drawings. Folks have to get out of the "it don't work fer me so it must not work for anybody" mindset. If the iPad was not a useful tool for both consumption and creation you would not have millions of repeat customers for it.

Why the insult? Being able to remote in to more powerful resources was the essence of client-server, web, and now cloud computing (predated by things such as X11's network transparent model). Just because you don't mash the bits on the iPad's CPU doesn't mean it won't allow you to get your specific task done, whether that is compute PI, or start a thermonuclear war, or do image processing using a gang of remote servers.

Personally I don't like the default input modes of iPad and Android devices (and MS Surface is still vaporware in my part of the World). The simple addition of a Bluetooth keyboard and your productivity goes up. You need a Net connection to be useful but it is getting more and more rare to be out of range of a 3G network in my part of the World.

So, IMHO, your statements show a mindset stuck in somewhat dated concepts about what constitutes a useful device or not. The iPad/Android etc are no less powerful that a web browser with access to the Net (where the millions of Google's Linux boxen will crunch all sorts of stuff for you; search; map, translate etc).

So, IMHO, your statements show a mindset stuck in somewhat dated concepts about what constitutes a useful device or not. The iPad/Android etc are no less powerful that a web browser with access to the Net (where the millions of Google's Linux boxen will crunch all sorts of stuff for you; search; map, translate etc).

I have to agree with the GP for the most part. I have paid for apps for the iphone which perform many of the functions he was talking about. Although I can technically do the work, it can hardly be described as functional. I would be just as well off trying to use my PS2 to write software. Its just not the right tool for the job. Anyone who deliberately uses the wrong tool for a job, just to say they can, strikes me as something of a tool themselves...

For me it's a question of making a quick correction than doing a lot of work. Although I can, using my actual keyboard, do quite a bit. I'm using iSSH and have a 132x40 screen. I can do most anything I need to that way.

Your contract clearly states that your posts must be illustrated with at least 3 examples, and "appeal to the user base of the site". You did give three examples, but only two are related to the topics that Slashdot users would care about (Facebook and Twitter are commonly disparaged on this site). The "first post" bonus only applies if the main criteria are met.

I bought the Vivo Tab RT on Friday, and I can say for a fact that it IS more than what my iPad (3rd gen) is. My only disappointments with the device came when I forgot that I was on my tablet and tried to do things that I can only do on my PC running Windows 8. Most of those were due to Flash being missing on the tablet. Adobe says that's coming, so it gets a pass for now.

My only other disappointment was that I had bought books on iBooks that aren't going to be available on Windows (I don't think). All my K

People buy apple because it's in vogue to own apple products. Tablets don't have much use period. Smartphones are useful, laptops are useful. The tablet with a dock laptop concept is kind of interesting to me, but mostly only because it finally brings laptops with touch screens.
I don't see it ever being in vogue to own a Microsoft product - they're too hated for their business practices.

Over simplification. I own mostly Apple products due to ease of use. I mostly use my handhelds as media players which Apple excels at. It's also painless to check mail and surf the web and it's a good platform for gaming. Sure if you are willing to put up with some hassles you can do most of this with Android devices and probably Surface. It's the "some hassles" that talk me out of the other products. Back when I owned half and half Windows and Mac computers I always went to the Macs to watch movies and vid

Or because they want a product which isn't overly fiddly to use and which does what they want. For years, Microsoft over-promised, and under-delivered, which is why many of us started using Linux and other alternatives in the first place.

Since I was already using iTunes, it was a no-brainer for me. Everything was ready to go in about 5 minutes.

Tablets don't have much use period.

Define 'use'? I can do everything on a tablet that can be done on a smart phone (if you have a smart phone, you probably don't need a tablet -- for those of us who don't want/have smart phones, the tablet is a better choice due to screen size).

But when I travel, I get a lot of use out of my iPad -- movies on the plane, checking Gmail in the airport and hotel, Google voice calls to the wife, and video games to pass the time. Finding restaurants with Urban Spoon and the map applications come in handy as well. The last few times I travelled for business, I didn't use my laptop even once, but I used my iPad 3-4 hours daily.

It's also my eBook reader, and gets used in the living room when I need to quickly check something on the web. And, all of those Bluray disks I buy that have a digital copy can go onto it, so I can watch Avengers on an airplane or in a hotel room (on their TV if I bring the cable I have for that).

I wouldn't do my daily work on it, but a lot of things I do on a computer don't require that I be sitting at a desk and typing. For those things my tablet is fine, if not actually better (and probably would be true of any tablet).

When I go on vacation the only device I'll bring is my iPad -- because I can access all of my email accounts (including my corporate Outlook web stuff) and have ready access to the stuff that I need when I'm on vacation. If I can check my company email from the hammock in my mom's back yard, and then go back to reading my book (all without getting up), I call that a pretty useful thing.

Every time I see someone say "tablets don't have much use" I can only think that it should be qualified as "for you". I actually get quite a bit of use out of mine. Everybody I know with a tablet gets a fair bit of use out of it... just not to do the same tasks they'd be doing on their work computer.

Hell, a friend of a friend is a professional photographer. Last year after he and his team had covered an event, he logged into his system, and kicked off the first few steps of his photo processing workflow -- all from poolside with a beer in his hand. In 5 minutes, he had initiated the automated stuff, and could relax for the rest of the day.

You may not be able to think of uses for one, and that's fine. But for many of us, it does cover a lot of things.